David Claerbout

We've gotten better at time. Though a recent study has confirmed we can't beat it, the flash-freezing of photographic documentation and the temporal control of video has brought contemporary time (if such a thing can be identified) a long way from the immutable march of the everyday. In the arts, we've discovered an ability to expand and contract time as it's lived, and moreover we've learned to communicate that ability – to make the variable internal perception evident in phrases like “time flies when you're having fun” into a problem, a challenge, and rich ground for artmaking. Hence, the continuing relevance of shows like “Fragments in Time and Space” (through Aug. 28th), an exhibition from the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. that aims to “demonstrate the diverse ways in which time and space have been conceptualized, employed, and manipulated.”